His chest was wet. But he would have known anyway that she was weeping. Her voice had become increasingly unsteady as she spoke. He wrapped his arms about her and pressed his smiling mouth to the top of her head.

“Actually,” she said a few minutes later, and her voice was steady again, “it is silly to say I do not want you to change. For we all must change or remain static in life, and that would be quite undesirable. We would still think and speak and act at the age of thirty and sixty as we did at the age of fourteen. Of course we must change and ought to change. You did not love me at Vauxhall. You only lusted after me, or, if that is too vulgar a notion, then you were simply affected by the seclusion of that clearing among the trees and by the moonlight and the distant music. When you came the next day to offer me marriage, you did not believe in love, not romantic love, anyway. Now you do. I thoroughly approve of that change in you, though I do not suppose it is a real change, is it? You have always been a loving person, after all. It is just that you had not yet opened your heart to that extra dimension of your being. And I have changed too. I knew that I would have no trouble finding a husband once I had made my come-out, for I am Lady Angeline Dudley and all sorts of men would want to marry me even if I looked like a hyena and had the personality of a toad—not that I know anything about the personality of toads, of course. I may be doing them a dreadful injustice. Perhaps they are the most fascinating of creatures. But you know what I mean. I hoped to find a man worthy of my love, though I really did not believe I could ever be worthy of his. I have always thought myself ugly and stupid and unladylike and … Well, a whole host of other depressing things. But now I know that I am beautiful and bright and an original and … Am I being boastful?”

He was laughing softly but with great tenderness too, for there was sudden vulnerability in her voice again. He rolled over with her until their positions were reversed and she was lying flat on the bed with him half over her. He kissed her eyes, her mouth.

“Angie,” he said, “never stop talking, my love. You are an eternal delight to me. Or if I may make an instant amendment to what I have just said, do stop talking occasionally so that I may snatch a few hours of sleep each night and so that I may concentrate upon making love to my secret mistress whenever the spirit moves one or the other of us or both and so that I may read the morning papers and the morning post and … Well, I daresay you know what I am saying. But never cease your chattering. And before you ask, I adore today’s bonnet. I assume there is straw beneath all the flowers? You must have a particularly strong neck to hold up all that weight.”

And then they were both laughing, their noses brushing together.

“You lie through your teeth,” she said. “You think it is hideous.”

“Not so,” he protested. “On this occasion I speak the solemn truth. When I stepped into the parlor downstairs earlier, I thought for a moment that I had opened the wrong door and had gone into the garden by mistake. A beautiful garden.”

She gazed wistfully up at him.

“You punched Lord Windrow on the chin,” she said, “because you thought he was abducting me.”

“So much,” he said ruefully, “for unnecessary violence.”

“You were quite, quite splendid,” she told him. “But poor Lord Windrow, when really he has eyes for no one but Miss Goddard.”

He frowned.

“He had better not hurt or compromise her,” he said, “or he is going to meet with more than just a single punch to the jaw.”

“But she has eyes for no one but him,” she said, wrapping her arms about his neck. “Can you not see, Edward, that they are perfect for each other?”

The logic of women again!

“He really is not a committed rake,” she said. “I have realized that for some time. He has merely been waiting to fall in love with someone who will hold him steady for the rest of his life. Besides, he loves his mother.”

He frowned for a second or two longer, for he really was not convinced. But then he could not help laughing. Perhaps there was room in this life for women’s logic as well as for his own far more sensible reasoning skills.

He kissed her, an action that took care of an indeterminate number of minutes—but who was counting?—before he withdrew somewhat reluctantly.

“We must stop there while I still can,” he said. “We must not go any further yet, perhaps not even tonight. You must be very sore.”

“A little,” she admitted. “It feels good.”

“It would not,” he said, “if I were to try acting the great lover again.”

“No, probably not,” she agreed.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her.

“Starved,” she said.

He rolled away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He got to his feet and crossed the room to the washstand.

“Stay where you are,” he said. “I am going to wash you.”

“Oh,” she said. As he approached the bed again with a wet cloth and the bowl, her eyes moved over his naked body and she smiled. “I love you terribly much, you know, Edward. I just wish there were words.”

Perhaps it was just as well there were not. She might never stop talking.

“If there were,” he said, sitting down on the side of the bed and setting about his task, “I would be the one saying them, Angie.”


EUNICE WAS SITTING very upright in the carriage, her back straight and barely touching the cushions behind her. Her feet were set neatly side by side on the floor. Her hands were cupped one above the other in her lap. Her eyes were on them.

Lord Windrow was slouched comfortably across the corner beside her, his hat tipped slightly over his half-closed eyes. But beneath the indolent eyelids he was watching her keenly.

They had just taken leave of his mother and were on their way back to Hallings. They would stop at the Peacock Inn so that he could reclaim his own horses and see if Heyward and Lady Angeline Dudley were indeed still there.

Eunice’s maid had glanced at the sky before the carriage left Norton, seen with obvious relief that the clouds, though low, did not seem to harbor the intention of raining upon the earth beneath just yet, and hopped up onto the box to renew her acquaintance with the coachman, who made room for her without any apparent resentment.

“Lady Windrow was very kind and very gracious,” Eunice said, “considering what you said to her yesterday, which, by the way, you had no right saying. She must be dreadfully alarmed.”

“What I said,” he reminded her, “was that I intend to ask you to marry me when the time seems appropriate. I have every right to express my intentions to whoever is willing to listen. If I choose to tell you that I intend flying to the moon, you may feel justified in calling me a nincompoop or you may merely yawn and nod off to sleep, but you cannot challenge my right to express such an intention. If memory serves you correctly, you will be forced to admit that I did not say I was going to marry you, only that I was going to ask you. Am I right?”

She would have loved to say no. He could see that. But honesty compelled her to tell the truth—or to avoid it.

“You still had no right to embarrass me and alarm your mother,” she said.

He crossed his arms and braced one foot against the seat opposite.

“You are perfectly correct,” he said. “I did not have any such right.”

Her lips tightened.

“Let me get this right,” he said. “I embarrass you. I know that I also excite you, Eunice, but that is for private lustful moments only, is it? In public you are embarrassed to be seen with me. Dear me. I suppose it is lowering for an intelligent, bookish female to be seen in the company of a mindless rake.”

“That is not what I meant at all,” she said, turning her head to look at him. “Oh, you know very well it is not what I meant.”

His eyes grew sleepier as she glared at him, and he dipped his head a little lower so that his hat brim shaded them more.

“It must be the opposite, then,” he said. “The poor little bluestocking daughter of a university don is consumed by awkward embarrassment at being seen in the company of a rich, titled gentleman of the ton. She feels so far out of her depth that she fears drowning.”

She gazed mutely at him for a moment and then clucked her tongue.

“What utter drivel,” she said.

He sighed.

“I am running out of guesses,” he said. “I give in. You win. Tell me why my words to my mother embarrassed you.”

“Because …” she began. She shook her head. “Well, look at me.”

Plain, sensible shoes. Plain, sensible high-waisted dress and plain white gloves. Plain, sensible bonnet covering neatly combed brown hair caught in an equally neat knot at her neck. Sensible face—not plain. Neat figure, not voluptuous, not its opposite either.

“I know,” he said. “There is a wart or a mole hidden under those clothes, is there not? Either one would definitely do it. Confess and I will order the carriage turned around so that I can return and tell my mother that I am not after all going to offer you marriage.”

She looked at him with tight-lipped exasperation and then burst out laughing.

“Oh, come now,” she said. “Admit it. You did not mean a word. You could not possibly wish to marry me.”

“I would lie to my own mother?” He raised his eyebrows. “What a dastardly thing to suggest. On her birthday too. But let me see. Why would I wish to marry you? Perhaps it is your looks, which utterly charm me. Or your wit, which seduces me. Or your mind, for which I feel a powerful, unbridled lust. Or perhaps it is the simple fact that I like you, that I enjoy talking with you and being with you, that I enjoy kissing you and would love nothing better than to do a great deal more than kiss you. Or perhaps it is that I have a hankering to see what you will look like and to know what you will be like at the age of thirty and forty and fifty and on upward until death do us part. Or perhaps I am curious to discover what sort of babies we may create together. Or perhaps it is that I have never, ever entertained these thoughts before in connection with any woman or even not in connection with any specific woman. I believe I must be in love with you, Eunice. Head over ears. Is that the correct expression? Windrow in love. I am the one who should be feeling all the embarrassment, not you.”

She was staring fixedly at him.

“But your mother must be so upset,” she said. “You are her only son, Lord Windrow, her only child. She must expect so much more of you.”

“She was merely being polite, then,” he asked, “when she hugged you and kissed you just now? And when she sat beside you on the love seat in the drawing room all last evening, taking the place I had coveted, her arm drawn through yours? My mother was the enormously wealthy only daughter of an enormously wealthy merchant when she married my father. She married him for love, and he married her for the same reason, even though his own finances were rather strained at the time of their marriage. He died four years ago after thirty-five years of marriage, leaving her brokenhearted, though she told me just last night after you had gone to bed that she would not trade those thirty-five years and her heartbreak now for a lifetime with any other man. For some time she has been hoping I will marry. She wants a daughter-in-law and she wants grandchildren. But most of all she wants to see me happy. She wants me to find the sort of love she and my father had. She fell in love with you on sight. You were very different, she said, from the sort of woman she feared I might choose—and that was not an insult. It was the highest praise. The only fear my mother has this morning is that perhaps you will say no. She knows I have not always lived the most exemplary of existences during the years since I left home to go to university.”

Her eyes were still steady on his. He took off his tall hat and tossed it onto the seat opposite.

“Will you say no?” he asked.

He saw her swallow.

“Are you asking?” she said.

He looked around at the interior of his carriage and through the window to the hedgerow rushing past and the fields just visible beyond. The Peacock was only a mile or two distant.

“I suppose,” he said, “there is no such thing as a perfectly romantic setting, is there? Or just the perfect time. Only the time and setting that are right and inevitable. Yes, I am asking, my love.”